Chapter 9 - Anya’s LetterMikhail stared at the letter for so long I thought he might never open it.
For a man feared by an entire city, paper seemed to frighten him more than guns.
“Read it,” Lena whispered.
He did not move.
So I did something stupid.
I reached for it.
His hand closed over mine, fast and hard.
The guards shifted.
I looked him dead in the eye. “Then you read it.”
His grip loosened.
He broke the seal.
The paper trembled once in his hand.
My dearest Mikhail,
If you are reading this, then I failed to survive what I discovered.
Your brother Roman has been selling pieces of your empire to men who hate you. Irina has been helping him. They believe you are too loyal to blood to see betrayal clearly.
They are wrong, but they are patient.
They will not strike you first. They will strike the thing that still makes you human.
Our son.
Misha sat upstairs, guarded by armed men, not knowing his dead mother had predicted this night years before.
Mikhail kept reading.
I have placed copies of everything in three locations. One is with the man who makes the best apple pie in Chicago. He asked no questions, which made him safer than anyone in our world.
My throat closed.
My father.
I remembered a winter night years ago when a beautiful woman in a gray scarf sat alone in booth nine. Dad had given her pie on the house because she looked like she had been crying.
I had forgotten her.
He had not.
Mikhail’s voice lowered as he read the last lines.
Do not trust Roman.
Do not trust Irina.
Do not trust the house.
Trust the woman who feeds hungry people without asking who they belong to.
He stopped.
Nobody breathed.
Slowly, everyone turned toward me.
My heart hammered.
“That’s not about me,” I said. “She meant my father.”
Mikhail looked at the letter again.
Then he unfolded the second page.
There was a photograph clipped to it.
A younger me stood behind the diner counter, laughing while holding a pie. My father stood beside me. In the corner of the photo, almost hidden near the door, Anya watched us.
On the back, she had written:
If David Bennett is gone, trust his daughter.
I stepped back.
“No.”
Mikhail’s eyes found mine.
But before he could speak, a guard shouted from upstairs.
“Sir!”
May you like
A gunshot cracked.
Then Misha screamed.
